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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   354 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What is your favourite national anthem from a country other than your own? I was always fond of the Russian one.

Is it not inevitable that these 'frontier AI labs' calling for regulation are going to get eaten alive by the half dozen big tech companies that have accountants overseeing the nerds? The business case will prevent AI risk, the market won't stay solvent long enough to present X risk.

I may not be educated, but I can sanity check. This stuff is really expensive and when the bill comes due someone who has the revenue to pay it gets the assets.

What dating app would you use to find the smartest possible matches? Hinge is just not enough information and OKC has been neutered and destroyed.

Do you mean smartest possible matches as in the match is smart, that is, it's a good match, or the match is with a smart person?

Previous discussion of Duolicious: 1 2 3

I think multiple "rationalists" have started dating and matchmaking services, but I don't recall any off the top of my head.

https://cuties.app. The people gave me SF striver vibes, but maybe only because to me, dating apps present people very unflatteringly.

EDIT: it also doesn't have many questions.

Marketing article from the developer

At its core, Cuties! is a community-based user directory. It allows people to find each other and vouch for friends.

Cuties! is for intellectually-curious, open-minded, and embodied communities. Someone described it as “intellectual hippies”. I would add people who have a creative online presence, such as a Substack or twitter.

It’s a 2∶1∶1 gender ratio of men∶women∶nonbinary.

Metrics: 28K page views/mo, 4.6K visitors/mo, 2K sign ups, 1.1K published profiles, 660 monthly active users, 115 self-reported met ups, dozens of friends + relationships, 2 engagements, 1 baby.

In comparison, Duolicious has 16,000 active users—male∶female∶nonbinary 5.4∶1∶1.

What anime porn hell is that?

It's a dating service that uses questions to determine compatibility. If you're looking for "the smartest possible matches", its search function lets you run filters on the answers to specific questions: e. g., "Do you enjoy engaging in deep, intellectual conversations with a partner: Yes", "Is it crucial for your partner to enjoy a good debate or intellectual discussion: Yes", and "Is the only thing worse than a landlord, a landlord who invests in multiple properties, and is that such a bad thing that it should be illegal: No".

This may not be exactly 'small scale' but it seems like the best place for it.

I attend a Calvary chapel church, and I'm being considered for a teaching role, and potentially looking towards taking over when the pastor retires. Lots to consider about this, but one thing that's a sticking point for me: Calvary chapel dogmatically teaches a pre-trib rapture, and I'm not convinced.

So, my questions, for anyone who has thoughts on them:

  1. Do any of y'all believe in pre-trib rapture, or more generally dispensationalism, and how would you steel-man the case for it? Or for others, how would you argue against it?

  2. What are your thoughts on having to teach a doctrine you're not confident in?

I am not 100% convinced about pre-trib, but I'll be happy to hear why I'm wrong on the way up.

The best case I've heard is one of circumstantial evidence. There are many references to Christ's second comming occuring an an unexpected time:

Mark 13:32-37

But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake.[a] For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants[b] in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows,[c] or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.

Matthew 25:13

Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

I Thessalonians 5:2

For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

Matthew 24:36

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

If something can only occur after another event, then there's no reason to expect the following event to occur until the first event happens.

If Christ can only return after the tribulation begins (mid trib or end trib) then everyone can wait unti the great tribulation begins to expect his return and everyone watching carefully before that is watching in vain.

The next best evidence is the structure of the Revelation of John. The church is mentioned frequently in the first 3 chapters of Revelation and then isnt mentioned again until chapter 22.

Also the 70 weeks of Daniel, where the first 69 weeks point clearly to Palm Sunday then a gap of indeterminate length before the 70th week which is the tribulation.

I don't think the bible gives enough evidence for any of the 3 common timing options to be unambiguously right, but I love the image of a great counter in heaven that ticks up each time anothet soul is saved, followef by Satan dreading that this one will be accompanied by the trumpet blast that signals the clear beginning of the end.

  1. My understanding of rapture theology is that it hangs its stance entirely on a single passage of Thessalonians. If Christianity is a real thing, it seems peculiar that nobody would have noticed that important detail before the 1800s.
  2. In spiritual matters, I advise against teaching something that you do not believe. It doesn't matter how eloquent you are, or how well you argue. These are matters that cut to the human soul. If you can't speak from your own soul, your congregation will know the lie of it in their own.

I am pretty lapsed in my faith, and haven't examined doctrine closely since becoming a competent and intelligent adult, so I can't especially speak to the specific underpinnings. But I would advise caution on stepping up into a leadership position for a church with shaky epistemic foundation.

That is, why is the church dogmatic about something you don't agree with. Either they're making a fundamental mistake, or you are. On an epistemic level, a rational person should almost never be confidently wrong. If the evidence is ambiguous (as much of Revelation is given the metaphorical nature of prophecy), then I would be skeptical of anyone being dogmatic about it.

It also potentially raises issues of priority. The core elements of faith are things like the Divinity of Jesus, salvation through Him, and various tenants on how to live a good Christian life and avoid sin. On a pragmatic level the rapture doesn't matter very much, because it's not actionable. You can't predict it, you can't prepare for it, and since it hasn't happened for two thousand years, the probability of it happening in our lifetimes is best approximated as small. I don't remember the exact tenants of my church, but looking up evangelical policy more broadly, the core beliefs are:

-A personal, bodily, and glorious return of Jesus Christ. -That the exact timing of His coming is known only to God. -That this return demands constant expectancy and serves to motivate godly living and ministry.

which sounds accurate to me. The specific timing is vague, and therefore different people are allowed to believe different things about it. If your church is not teaching that the timing is vague and open to interpretation, or worse teaching that their one interpretation is definitely correct rather than just a leading theory (ie, we believe this is probably what's true but other people believe differently and we're not entirely confident) then that calls into question their entire epistemic policy. What else might they be dogmatically overconfident about? How and why are such decisions made, and what happens if human politics get involved?

I don't think this automatically disqualifies them from being something you should involve yourself in on a leadership level. But it's something you should be considering.

Yeah it's an interesting position they take. It's not a dogma in the sense that we say it's definitely true, and we can have communion and agreement with churches that don't teach it, but it's considered a 'distinctive' trait of Calvary chapels and thus obligatory for affiliation with the overarching organizations.

From what understand it's emphasized largely for pastoral reasons, because teaching Christ's imminent return is valuable both for getting people to make a decision for Christ today as well as to provide hope to believers. That's the theory anyway. But in practice I see a lot of people trying to predict the timing of the rapture (and getting it wrong lol) which I think is unhealthy. I like pretty much everything else about the church and its distinctives though!

Is Christ's return less imminent if the millennium of Revelation 20 is symbolic of the present age of the Church between Christ's ascension and return? Arguably amillennialism is 7 years more imminent.

I've a larger issue with dispensationalism than the apocalyptic eschatology. The distinction between Israel and the church as two separate peoples of God rather than the Church grafted into Israel as one people of God in the new covenant.

My church is not dogmatic on this as specific beliefs in this area are not necessary for salvation, yet may present a stumbling block. Most of the other men in my men's Bible study would have an amillennial, partial preterist position.

Culture warry, but I don't have enough meat or a specific post to include this on the main thread: in your opinion, how much of current dating discourse and the corresponding social trends are due to changing material conditions and economic anxiety? I've seen much more dialogue about how Gen-Z women are regressing to the mean compared to their Millennial women counterparts - more concerned with materialism and man's ability to provide, more expectant of chivalry (though they've renamed it "princess treatment"), more averse to hookup culture. Gen-Z women are much more considerate than Millennials of the fact that there are determinants of partner quality beyond just "love" and that a purely "equal" relationship is not necessarily ideal. This is despite (or perhaps because of) their ostensible feminism. I've also seen talks of how looksmaxxing is a response to changing socioeconomic conditions, that it is a means of restoring some sense of control. The theory goes, the economy is becoming increasingly obtuse and inaccessible to many young people, so to cope, they turn to something they can more immediately affect change upon: their bodies.

What do you think?

Looksmaxxing seems to me to be a direct consequence of dating apps, social isolation, and the decline of third spaces. If your entire hook for a woman is your profile picture, and she isn't going to offer you a chance to charm her unless you pass the looks test first, how you look is going to matter a lot more. Men will notice and respond by hitting the gym and doing whatever else Clavicular is pushing. I met pretty much all my girlfriends in third spaces and that gave me time to prove I was funny which can take you from a 4 to a 7. I'm lucky I'm married--I'd be in hell if I had to rely on the apps.

All of this, plus the "arms race" effect. It's OK to be a bit frumpy if that's just what all the regular guys look like. But when everyone starts working heavily on their appearance, you start to stand out a lot more (in a bad way) if you're the one who's not.

@ratherblather

Looksmaxxing is also a return to the mean. Men throughout history have always worked on their bodies, vainly concerned themselves with their physical appearance, worn jewelry and makeup. Paul was already complaining about this 2000 years ago.

The entire male aesthetic of the 20th century was a temporary blip created by Anglo-American Protestantism (emphasis on the American, late 17th century English Protestant guys loved their fancy wigs and blush), and mass military conscription (long hair and beards aren’t good for trench lice and gas-mask seals). And also because Capitalism, Communism, and Fascism were all glazing the aesthetics of the working class for different reasons.

Dandyism has entered the chat.

I have weird obsessions, okay? I only wish I had gotten that book when it was new, as opposed to now. That price tag, yikes...

On the one hand, I think you make a good point. It's always safer to be able to earn your own money so as to not be economically trapped, but the safe paths to that for middle class gen-z women are far from guaranteed.

I also think that the rise of easy to make short form content lets pointless materialists find and indulge each other more than ever (it's always existed just with less variety, previous generations had qvc china birds and beanie babies vs the disgusting labubus, designer handbags, and those plastic dumpling things) and that's true for gold-digging as well. I think consumer goods are so cheap compared to other costs of living our scarcity magpie brains just can get overwhelmed and greedy. Its just easier to visualize when there are millions of video posts vs GenX / Senior millennials having no public content they actually created until maybe magazines in their mid-20s? I don't think "princess treatment" is anything other than financial wanting to be bought stuff, not a true respect for chivalric norms aside from open the door and pay the check.

But I think the hookup culture thing is more strongly related to kids having no freedom as teenagers (no jobs / alcohol / driving) and then putting them into colleges that tell them anyone unattractive hitting on you is part of rape culture.

I doubt it has anything to do with any shifts in economic or material conditions, just more people being Very Online allows concept handles and awareness of them to spread more quickly and widely, for more people to feel more comfortable to say the quiet part out loud.

I can assure you Gen Z women didn’t invent or even reinvent female princess complexes, the female fondness for using up men’s time, money, energy, and bragging or showing off about it. See, for example, expensive wedding rings, lavish weddings, getting gifts/drinks/dinner bought for them, getting taken on cUtE (that is, expensive) dates, and/or sharing photos to brag or show off the aforementioned.

Nor was it some secret among men that chicks dig tall, muscular guys with handsome faces and that at least one way to improve one’s lot was to hit the gym to better the physicial dominance cues that chicks love.

I agree, none of these concepts are exactly new. I am more remarking that they are more prevalent among Gen-Z compared to Millennials. I think in the Millennial collective consciousness (or maybe the Obama-era Optimist conscious), they were the generation that equalized dating, that wouldn't be shallow, that would bring about positivity and equality and love and sexual libertinism. This is idealistic, to be sure, and practically speaking plenty of Millennials weren't this way. Even so, it's still notable to me that Gen-Z is taking baby steps against that mindset.

I think a lot of the millennial dating discourse you/we personally encountered was in the nerdy/educated liberal social scene, due to IRL filters and the internet at the time being full of nerdier/educated people and the online media being liberal. There was this collective front of women writing blogs who maintained the narrative that women only want Nice guys (who are feminist), and any guy who can't get laid is insufficiently feminist and also not an actual Nice Guy but in fact a Nice guy, also something-something-male-gaze, frat party rape, wage gap, et cetera.

These days the internet is much trashier, and the ideological messaging has drifted to "must be a frothing leftist to fuck me", while lowest-common-denominatir women have let slip that actually they just want CEOs with abs. Liberal Feminism just doesn't have a monopoly on dating discourse anymore.

Isn't it just that older people are cringe so you have to go in a different direction in order to make sure you're not associated with their cringy staleness?

It's hard to say. This feels more subtle and insidious to me. If it were simple generational differences, I would imagine the Gen-Z swing would be more pronounced. In my eyes, the Gen-Z mindset doesn't seem like a wholesale repudiation of Millennial behaviors, rather a refinement of them taking into account the cynicism of the era. I think it explains, in part, why people aren't dating as much: so much ink has been spilled about the disastrous consequences of dating the wrong person, particularly their impact on your career.

My uncle, a retired Green Beret, used to always say "You'll lose money chasing women, but you'll never lose women chasing money." I think he's a chauvinistic goof for saying that, but I can't help but feel like everyone in Gen-Z, male and female, has internalized that mindset to some degree. Just substitute money for whatever an individual's prized social currency is. I may have a biased sample, of course, but no one wants to risk getting "slowed down" by a relationship.

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up al-Shafi'i's The Epistle on Legal Theory. Backlog moving slowly.

The Last Kings of Hollywood gifted to me by the same guy who gave me a few other film-related books. It follows the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg from the 60s to the 80s. It's a hardcover copy which I like but means I don't carry it on commutes, so may take a while.

I finished my re-read of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. I first read them 20ish years ago and didn't remember much about them aside from the Shrike and big group of travelers. Overall I was disappointed and perhaps there's a reason I didn't remember much about them. The writing style was far clunkier than I expected and Fall suffered from the problem where chapters from different characters' POVs slows a novel to a halt. Fall also felt like he was being paid by the word, such as paragraphs describing something in detail that had already been described in detail. I was invested in some of the characters, but once it became a galactic struggle of humanity against the AIs, I mostly lost interest. Like most books involving some time travel, I'm fairly certain it's not internally consistent, but I don't care enough to reread it again and find the contradictions.

Now reading some silly vampire books. First was Coffin Moon by Rosson, which sold me with its badass cover. Solidly B grade but that's all I expected. Now working on The Dracula Tape from 1975, which retells the Dracula story from his point of view and came out a year before Anne Rice's famous vampire POV novel. It's well-written and captures a good "I'm the poor misunderstood victim" tone without much whining. Next will be Stainless by Grimson, which is a noir vampire book from 1996 that was hard to find for a while until McNally Editions issued a reprint.

I'm currently reading David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Good Thing I'll Never Do Again. It's quite enjoyable, though I prefer his fiction a bit more. That said, now on my second DFW book, I can understand why his prose is considered a bit controversial. It's purpley at times and his word choice, while always apt and appropriate, does occasionally veer into the pointlessly obscure. Still, he's quite a remarkable author and I envy his ability to distill complex, nigh-indescribable emotions into a few sentences.

I love the title essay from that collection. I can only imagine how mortified the cruise director was catching the reporter who is supposed to be writing a puff piece thats as close to ad copy as possibe chumming the water off the back of the boat with au jus or trying to catch the housekeeper cleaning.

I once took a ride on the Zenith and couldn't help thinking of it as the Nadir.

I agree about his ability to distil emotions into a few sentences. The Kate Glompert description of depression, from Infinite Jest, is the one that made the concept real for me.

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